Global Bioenergies hits first milestone on renewable methacrylic acid

In France, Global Bioenergies announced it has reached the first milestone of the BioMA+ project, which is financed by the French “Investissements d’Avenir” state program. The project aims at developing a renewable value chain to methacrylic acid, a key constituent of acrylic paints.

Achieving this first milestone result unlocks a $1.93 million payment.

Global Bioenergies had in this context started-up an industrial pilot in November on the agro-industrial site of Pomacle-Bazancourt. The company ARD, a subsidiary of the sugar refiner Cristal Union, is in charge of the pilot’s exploitation and now carries out on a weekly basis fermentation trials mimicking exploitation at full-scale.

Tony Genovesi, Global Bioenergies manager of the BioMA+ program, said, “The process adapts well to its new industrial environment, despite it being radically different to the laboratory environment in which it has previously been developed. We have produced more isobutene in the last three months than we had over the past five years.”